New Monograph on the Environment from the Acton Institute

January 29, 2014

Grand Rapids, Mich. – (January 29, 2013) Catholicism, Ecology, and the Environment: A Bishop’s Reflection is now available from the Acton Institute. The latest monograph in the Christian Social Thought Series was written by Bishop Dominique Rey and translated by Clare Chapman.

Is modern environmentalism compatible with Christianity? Bishop Rey provides answers to this critical question in this theological reflection on the relationships among God, man, and nature. Rey originally wrote this in French as ‘Peut-on êre Catho et Écolo? Lettre sur l’écologie’ (‘Can One Be Catholic and Green? A Letter on Ecology’) in 2012. More than a critique of secular environmentalism’s idolatry of nature, Rey’s primary purpose is to show Catholics and other Christians how they can view the environment in a way that is consistent with sacred Scripture, tradition, and magisterial teaching. Drawing on Scripture, the insights of Church Fathers, and recent magisterial teaching on ecological issues, Rey stresses that if we lose a correct understanding of man’s relationship to God and how that relationship shapes man’s self-understanding, then our capacity to think coherently about ecological subjects corrodes.

Bishop Dominique Rey was ordained as a priest for the diocese of Paris in 1984 and was ordained as a Roman Catholic bishop of Fréjus-Toulon, France in 2000 by Cardinal Jean-Marie Lustiger. He graduated with a degree in economics from Lyon, received his PhD in fiscal policy from Clermont-Ferrand, and earned a degree in theology as well as canon law from the Institute Catholique de Paris.